The heiress to a throne in need, a slanderous rival with her pusillanimous partner and a king from historic German legend – these are the figures of a conflict which demands not so much a solution as a downright redemption. It is Lohengrin, the Knight of the Swan, who is to bring this about, sent by the company of the Holy Grail to stand by Elsa of Brabant in “Divine Judgment” on an accusation of fratricide. His stipulation is her trust in him: “Never are you to enquire” who he is, Lohengrin demands of his protégée, and on her behalf not only wins the duel of “Divine Judgment” against her accuser Telramund, acting for the intriguing rival Ortrud, but also instals himself as “Protector of Brabant” at Elsa’s side as her consort.

This sounds like German Romanticism, but the text of Richard Wagner (1813-1883) also struck a political note in the German “Vormärz” (i.e. pre-March), the period preceding the revolution of March 1848, into which the writing of “Lohengrin” (premièred in 1845) falls. How can one love a man whose name one does not know, how can such a nameless man win the confidence of a whole nation? Lohengrin’s task of replacing stubborn nationalism with a rule of justice and rectitude failed, just as did the 1848 revolution, involvement in which forced Wagner to flee his country. Doomed to failure is also Lohengrin’s love for Elsa, which cannot survive such pressure to save the world from itself.

After Henze’s “Phaedra” and Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress” Sabine Hartmannshenn and her team did not ask questions either, but set about sounding Wagner’s “Lohengrin” myth with regard to deeper levels of meaning and their applicability when transported into our modern mentality.